


End Game

by Evilida



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Constance Langdon's Missing Child, Exorcisms, F/M, Halloween, M/M, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8119855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilida/pseuds/Evilida
Summary: It is Halloween, the one night of the year when the ghosts residing in the murder house can leave the property.  Chad has plans for the day but he needs Moira's help.





	1. Time to Go

Without the presence of the living to give them a common interest, the ghosts intersected randomly. They banded together in temporary alliances, which almost immediately fell apart. They were unable to connect with each other or to see beyond their own obsessions.  They were like animatronic robots at Disneyland, performing the same little psychodramas over and over again, but without an audience to watch them.  The Harmons were the only alliance that lasted. They, along with Moira, their loyal housekeeper, were a family forever.  The other ghosts, lonely, each one trapped in his or her individual nightmare, looked on in envy. 

Chad could feel Patrick nearby. His ex-boyfriend might even be in the same room with him, just choosing not to make himself visible.  He knew that Patrick had recently been having sex with Hayden.  Women weren’t Patrick’s first choice, but they _were_ a choice for him, while for Chad they were not.  Their sex had been kinky and violent and noisy.  Very noisy, so that it had been impossible for Chad (or for Ben Harmon) to ignore what was going on. 

Of course, their affair hadn’t lasted. Was it Hayden who dumped Patrick? Maybe she finally admitted to herself that her fantasy of making Ben Harmon jealous - so that he would want her again - was never going to happen?  That didn't seem likely to Chad. Perhaps it had been Patrick who walked away. Maybe his ex-lover had realized that if Chad was just a little bit crazy, then Hayden was full-on, bat-shit obsessive?

In any case, since their affair had ended, Patrick had been showing more of an interest in Chad. Pragmatically, the muscular blond had decided that an eternity with someone you no longer loved was still slightly better than an eternity alone.

Chad ignored him.

 

When he’d been alive, Chad had found an antique letter opener in a second-hand store. The knife was sterling silver, but the proprietor was too ignorant to recognize that.  He’d priced it too low, and Chad knew that he could buy it and then sell it somewhere else for double what the storekeeper was asking for it.  But he didn’t particularly want to sell it.  He imagined sitting at the breakfast table of his beautiful home, using this elegant object to open letters.   Back then, he’d imagined party invitations, birthday cards....not the endless bills from contractors and workmen and the increasingly ugly demands for payment from the bank.

He’d bought the letter opener at once, even though technically he couldn’t afford it.  He’d bought a lot of things he couldn’t afford back then.  Most of the those things were gone now – packed up and sold by his estate or by Patrick’s - but they’d missed the letter opener.  And now Chad carried it with him.

Silver has properties. Silver is magical.  Silver can hurt ghosts – make real wounds that scar and hurt forever, wounds that won’t heal.  Ever since Chad had begun to carry the letter opener, Tate had avoided him.  His murderer was a coward.  He’d killed wearing masks and make-up, in costume, surprising his unarmed victims.  He ran away from any kind of fair fight. When Chad touched the handle of the letter opener, it burned his hand.  He kept it wrapped in a dish towel, but always close.  His protection. His talisman.

 

This bright October day, Chad was making a cake. The last people to have lived in the house, the Ramos family, had left months - no, years - ago, so there shouldn’t have been fresh eggs or milk in the refrigerator, let alone the glazed fruit, candied violets and marzipan he was planning to use for decoration. Perhaps the house provided what he needed, or maybe he was just imagining everything. It hardly mattered; it wasn’t as if anyone was ever going to eat this particular cake.

Chad was not an intuitive baker, but he was meticulous in following directions. The cake came out of the oven looking exactly as it should. 

While it cooled, he made royal icing and melted chocolate.

He’d begun icing the cake when Moira walked into the kitchen. The housekeeper, in her old-fashioned black uniform with lace collar, regarded him seriously for a moment before coming to sit beside him at the kitchen table.

“May I help?” she asked.

She was pretending that she hadn’t spent the last few years cozying up to the Harmons, conveniently letting herself forget that Chad had ever existed. Oh well, Chad could pretend too.

“Of course,” he said graciously. “You can make the centrepiece.”

Chad had set up a craft station on one end of the table. There was a glue gun, ribbon,  decorative gourds, cobs of Indian corn, dried leaves, sheaves of wheat, and even (super-tacky!) glitter and spray paint.  There was everything Moira needed to go all-out Martha Stewart.

“I looked out the window the other day and saw the pumpkin on the Wasserstein’s porch, and I realized that it will be soon be Halloween again. It’s hard to keep track of time...the months and years just slip by,” Chad said.

Moira nodded vaguely, hardly paying attention. She was experimenting with the glue gun, trying to keep the flow of glue steady and even.  Moira liked crafting.

“So what will you be doing on Halloween?” Chad asked. “I know you used to visit your mother, but now that she's passed on to the other side...”

“I don’t know really,” Moira said. “I expect I’ll spend Halloween with the Harmons, doing whatever they want to do.  I haven’t given it much thought.  I suppose you’ll be going out with Patrick?”

“No. Patrick and I are over.  He’ll no doubt spend Halloween bar-hopping and sticking his dick into every available orifice... but that’s his business. I honestly don’t care anymore what he does,” Chad said, lying through his teeth, since he did still care very much.  Caught in a loop, he was unable to stop caring.

“I was thinking of going to church,” he said casually.

“Really?” Moira said, unable to hide her surprise.

“Yes, to your church. I mean, a Roman Catholic church.”

In life, Chad had never given much thought to the afterlife. However, on a couple of occasions he had attended a gay-friendly church, where a man could hold his boyfriend’s hand during the service without anyone glaring at him.   He hadn’t really listened to the sermon.  Instead he’d been busy imagining his future self sitting in the exact same spot.   Future Chad would be sitting next to Patrick and their perfectly dressed, perfectly behaved child.  He’d imagined the pastor beaming down on them benevolently. The ideal Guppy family.

“You’re thinking of converting?” Moira asked.

“It’s probably a bit too late for that,” Chad admitted. “I want to ask for the priest’s help.  I want to leave this house.  Maybe I’ll go to hell. I’ll probably go to hell if your Church is correct.  I mean I can hardly claim to have repented of my sins when my last living act was reaching out to touch the hand of the man I was sinning with.”

“Oh, Chad,” Moira said softly.

“I want to go on to the next stage, whatever it is. I’m done with the house.  I’m done with Patrick.  I’m done with everything.  I’m ready to move on, and maybe a priest could help me. Exorcise me. Banish me to the netherworld or whatever it is that they do.”

“But if he banished you, then we’d all have to go!”

“Not necessarily,” Chad said. “But even if that were so...the good ones deserve to move on.  The house’s innocent victims.  You and the nurses, that handicapped boy with his ball, Vivien and Violet, even Ben.  You’ll all go someplace good; I know it.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done!” Moira said, dropping the glue gun. “And you’re forgetting that Violet committed suicide.  Suicide is a mortal sin.”

“Whatever you’ve done, I know you’re a good person. And Violet was under Tate’s influence when she killed herself. She wasn’t in her right mind. Besides, God’s mercy is supposed to be infinite, isn’t it?  If you and I can have mercy for Violet, how could your God be any less understanding?

I want you to come with me. I don’t belong in a Roman Catholic church.  I won’t know what to do or how to behave. He’ll be able to tell that I’m not only queer but also a godless heathen. I need you there to talk to him.  You know how to act and what to say.

I know you want this to end just as much as I do.  Don't you want to be with your mother?”

Silently, Moira nodded.

 

The Harmons hadn’t liked that she was spending Halloween with Chad. They’d frozen Chad out, unable to forgive him for his scheme to kidnap their child and raise it as his own.  However, how she spent Halloween was entirely Moira’s decision to make.

So now she and Chad were walking down the street side by side, close but never touching. Chad was wearing something subdued and sombre for the occasion, as if he were attending a funeral.  He’d even toned down his usual flamboyantly bitchy manner. One pocket of his navy blue pea-coat sagged under the weight of the silver letter opener – his lucky charm.

“You’re sure about this?” Moira asked, as they stood in front of the door to the Church of the Holy Family.

Chad nodded, and they walked in.

 

Twenty minutes later, Moira and Chad were sitting in the office of the parish priest. He was a tall, thin, albino man of scholarly appearance.  He wore dark glasses to protect his sensitive eyes, which also made it very difficult to read his expression.

Despite the years that had passed, Moira had recognized him at once.

The priest, Clarence Langdon, recognized Moira. as well. However, he couldn’t believe that the woman in front of him was his family’s maid and his father’s mistress. His father had disappeared at the same time as the family maid while Clarence was at boarding school. Everyone had assumed that they had run off together, but Clarence had always doubted that story. His father had been keenly aware of his social position; he might sleep with a maid but he would never make a life with one. In his heart, Fr. Langdon was sure that his father and the maid were both dead. Moira was dead so this unsettling look-alike could not be her.  In any case, the woman he saw was young and vibrant and very, very sexy, and Moira, if she were still alive, would have been older than he was. 

His visitor was undeniably attractive, but her clothes were cheap and provocative, and the drug-store scent she wore was sickeningly sweet He wondered for a moment, if she and the young man beside her had come to ask him to officiate at their wedding. However, something in the young man’s appearance and demeanor made him reject that idea.

“What can I do for you?” the clergyman asked politely.

“We’re here,” Moira said, “to ask for the Church’s help. It’s about a house with a long history of violent incidents and strange occurrences.”

“You’ve probably heard of it,” Chad added. “It’s a well-known stop on the horror house tour.  They call it the murder house.”

“I believe that I am quite familiar with the house you’re referring to,” the priest said. “In fact, I used to live there myself as a child."

"Then you must have seen things...sensed things?" Moira asked.

He shook his head. "I'm not in the least sensitive to psychic phenomena. My sister, God rest her unfortunate soul, used to tell me stories about the 'other people' who lived in the house with us. My mother called her a liar and punished her for telling tall tales. All I can say for myself is that I found that place unwelcoming. I never liked that house, and I had the distinct impression that the house never liked me either. No matter. I found my true home with the Mother Church."

The priest sighed heavily.

"Ever since the Church assigned me this parish, I knew that I would have to return there. I can’t shirk my duty any longer, no matter how much I wish that I could.”

“So you’ll help us, Father Langdon?” Moira asked.

“Just to be clear, you’re asking for an exorcism?”

They nodded.

“I’m no expert on the rite. I would need to consult with my bishop...perhaps send for someone with more experience in this area.  It will take time.  In the meantime, do not go back to the house.  If you have no other place to stay, I can offer you temporary accommodations in one of our retreats.  A humble abode, to be sure, not what you are used to...” he said, regarding the young man’s stylish and obviously expensive clothing.

“We can’t leave.” Moira said.

“But you must,” the priest said. “You are in great spiritual and physical peril.”

“We're ghosts,” Chad said bluntly. “We’re stuck in that house of horrors until you release us.”

The priest stared at him, and then turned towards the young woman to see how she was reacting to this insane outburst. However, that sexy young woman was gone, replaced by another, older redhead. Someone whose mis-matched eyes shone with compassion and hard-earned wisdom. 

“We don’t know where we’re going,” she said, “but it’s time for us to leave.”


	2. Reinforcements

Patrick had never had any trouble picking up men, but that evening he was a sex god, and everyone knew it. Young, hot bodies pressed against his, offering themselves to him, eager to kneel before him.   They danced to the rhythm of a song composed before most of them had been born.  At the Parachute Club, disco had never died.  The air was thick with a heady fug of masculine sweat, body spray, beer and the house’s sickly-sweet Halloween cocktail, a murky green concoction that the bartender called Hecate’s Brew.  

When the song ended, Patrick needed a break. Giving his worshippers an apologetic wave, he headed to the bar.  The bartender handed him a cocktail, a present from a young man at the other end of the bar, whose handsome face was still marked with adolescent acne. Pat took a sip.  It tasted like lime Jell-O mixed with cough syrup.  He would have preferred a beer or even a glass of water.

The door opened then and a group of four or five men pushed themselves into the already-packed venue. Patrick’s eyes were immediately drawn to a young man at the fringes of the group.  He was wearing a Halloween costume – a fire-engine red leotard and a pair of plastic devil horns. It was Allan, a.k.a. the “power bottom”.  Allan had been the love of his life - or at least the last three months of it.

Patrick stood rooted to the spot, torn by his desire to go over to Allen and his awareness that doing so would change Allan’s life in ways that Patrick could not predict. There was a huge gulf between them now. Allan was living and breathing.  Patrick was a ghost, given temporary leave from the house he haunted for one night out of the year. 

Patrick’s better self prevailed. He turned away from the man he loved and headed toward the back door, threading his way gracefully through the dancers. In his rush to escape, he left his leather jacket behind.

After the equatorial atmosphere of the Parachute Club, the evening’s autumnal chill was like a slap in the face. Patrick stumbled in the dark alley. He threw up, spattering a couple embracing in the shadows.

“Sorry,” he muttered, tottering towards the street.

Feeling weak and dazed, he sat down on the sidewalk, back against the club wall and breathed deeply, trying to calm his racing heart. His eyes to the ground, he did not see the figure who walked towards him.

“Why, don’t you make a pretty picture!” Chad exclaimed. “The specks of vomit on your shirt add just the right touch of gritty realism.”

Patrick looked up at his ex-partner. Once he had loved Chad, but that seemed a very long time ago. Right now, he could scarcely remember what had attracted him to the other man.

 It was Pat’s unfortunate fate to be stuck with the man he had betrayed.  He was trapped forever in an all-male production of Who’s‘ Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  And to make it worse, he wasn’t even playing the part of George, who at least got a few good licks in.  Pat was Honey, the dim one who couldn’t keep up, who couldn’t even hold her liquor.

“Go away, Chad.”

He shut his eyes, hoping that when he opened them Chad would be gone.

“You’ve got to say it like you really mean it or it doesn’t work,” Chad said. “I need to talk to you. How drunk are you?  Are you going to remember any of this tomorrow?”

“I’m not drunk, I’m...” Patrick wanted to say ‘heart-broken’ but he couldn’t say it in front of Chad.

 It would hurt his ex-partner to be reminded that Pat was still in love with his “twink trainer”. Chad lashed out viciously when he was hurt, and Patrick was in too fragile a state to deal with all that bitterness. 

“We’ll get you some coffee to sober you up...”

“Coffee doesn’t sober people up. I need water and aspirin.”

“Then we’ll get you water and aspirin,” Chad said. He put out his hand.  Patrick hesitated and then took it, allowing Chad to pull him to his feet. “We’ll find a diner or something.  I don’t want to go back home quite yet.”

 

Chad ordered a mochaccino, ignoring Patrick’s disapproving glance.

“I’m dead,” Chad said, shrugging. “I don’t have to worry about calories or cholesterol, so I might as well enjoy myself.”

“Ice water and an aspirin, if you have any.”

After the waitress delivered their order, Patrick told Chad his plans for the exorcism.

“You can’t be serious. You’re sending us all to hell, you know!”

“Speak for yourself. Some of us are not cheats and murderers.”

“As if you’re pure as the driven snow. We tried to kidnap the Harmons’ babies.”

“Those babies would have been much better off with us and you know it. One baby’s father is a mass murderer and the other’s is a rage-oholic who buried his girlfriend under the gazebo. We were doing those babies a favour.”

“An exorcism won’t work anyway. That psychic, Billie Dean, tried to get rid of us and it didn’t work.”

“Oh please...her! She was a pathetic Lifetime Channel wannabe who thought she could get rid of us just by saying the magic word!  She was a joke.

Father Langdon is the Catholic Church. They are the real deal.  They’ve been performing exorcisms for centuries.  They’ve got a whole procedure all worked out – bell, book and candle.”

“He’s agreed? Does Langdon know that he’ll be sending his own brother to Hell?”

“Tate belongs in Hell,” Chad said.

“I’m with you, but Fr. Langdon might disagree.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell him.”

“You’re really going to do this.”

Chad nodded. “I’m giving you fair warning.  You can join me and Moira and move on to whatever is next, or you can team up with your murderer and the butcher doctor in the basement to try to stop us.”

 

“I was visited by two ghosts on Halloween.” Fr. Langdon could picture exactly how the bishop would react to those words.  The bishop was a good man but he was unimaginative almost to a fault.  He’d accuse Fr. Langdon of being delusional or of having been duped by a Halloween prank.  The bishop would want hard evidence.

Fr. Langdon researched the history of his childhood home. He started with the murder house tour.  While the guide gave a short summary of a few of the many acts of violence that had taken place within the house’s walls, he looked up and thought he caught a glimpse of someone in the window.  Someone else on the bus cried out and pointed, so he knew he was not the only one.  If he was imagining things, someone else was sharing the same delusions.

He followed up with visits to the city archives and to the microfiched newspaper collection at the main branch of the library. He compiled an extensive dossier of murders, suicides, grisly accidents and disappearances.  And while he read, photocopied and took notes, a part of him was remembering his childhood.

Clarence Langdon was an albino, and his unusual appearance had made him a target for bullying at his elementary school. His mother, fiercely protective, had complained repeatedly to the school principal and even the school board, but no action was taken to protect him or to punish his tormentors.  Finally, she had pulled him out of school.

 Constance tried, for a short time, to educate him at home, but she lacked patience.  She’d walk away from his lessons before he did, frustrated by his inability to grasp new concepts instantly.  At such times, Moira would take over.  She was a better teacher, despite her lack of education. (She’d been pulled out of school to work at the age of fourteen.)  However, Constance would not have her son taught by an ignorant Irish maid. She had convinced her husband to come up with the money to send his son away to boarding school.

He had prospered at the school, found friends, and even discovered a mentor in the school’s chaplain. He’d come home for vacations and Christmas breaks reluctantly, because he no longer felt part of the family. 

Addie was same as ever, of course, and he loved her, but his younger brother Tate was growing up without him. He scarcely knew him. Tate was an attractive child, but Clarence always felt uneasy in his company.  His mother was distant and preoccupied, and his father and Moira had disappeared entirely.  He was not allowed to mention their names in the house.  It was as if they had never existed.

His childhood home had always been a place of secrets.

 

Fr. Langdon placed the dossier he had compiled on the bishop’s desk. He told him that he had been visited by two parishioners who had asked to perform an exorcism on the murder house.

“Not an exorcism,” the bishop corrected pedantically. “An exorcism is performed on a person who is being besieged by demons.  Not on a place or an object.”

“A blessing then. A cleansing.”

The bishop leafed through the pages, occasionally reading a sentence here or there. A name caught his eye.

“This Tate Langdon, this boy shot by the police, shares your last name. Was he related to you by any chance?”

“My brother.”

“What I see here,” he said, “deeply troubles me.”

“It would trouble anyone,” Fr. Langdon said. “The place has an ugly history.”

“That is not what I am talking about. What I see here, Fr. Langdon, is the reflection of an unhealthy mind.  You have allowed yourself to become obsessed.  You see your family’s own tragedy as part of some vast demonic conspiracy.”

“That’s not so. I’m not some crazed conspiracy theorist. All the incidents I note in that file actually happened. There are newspaper stories and documents to support every word.”

“No doubt,” the bishop said. “The facts may be valid but the theory tying them together is the product of your obsession.”

“You aren’t going to approve my request for an exorcism,” Fr. Langdon said resignedly.

“What you are talking about is not an exorcism; I thought I explained that to you, already,” he said testily. “You’re to have nothing to do with the house.”

“But your excellency...”

“This matter is not up for discussion, Fr. Langdon. I’ve come to a decision and you must accept it.

I can see that you have never properly dealt with your unfortunate past,” the bishop said. “I think a period of respite and reflection is called for, perhaps even reassignment to another parish.”

The prospect of being reassigned would have pleased Fr. Langdon in other circumstances. He had never been happy living in a place that held so many unhappy memories.  However, he knew that leaving now would be a dereliction of duty. 

Fr.Langden walked away from the bishop’s office with a heavy heart. He knew that he would have to go ahead without the support and approval of his Church. Clarence Langden felt very alone and very vulnerable.


	3. The Fall of the Murder House

Father Langdon knocked on the door to his childhood home. Moira opened the door. Chad and Patrick stood beside her. Father Langdon thought of ghosts as flimsy, transparent things, half in this world and half beyond it. However, the three ghosts standing before him seemed as solid and substantial as the priest himself. This time, because of his research into the house’s recent history, he recognized Chad as the perpetrator of a particularly grisly murder-suicide. The crime had received its fair share of sensationalistic press coverage at the time, even making the cover of the National Enquirer. To Fr. Langdon’s surprise, the smiling young man standing at his side was the person that Chad had murdered.

“Hello, Father Langdon. I’m Pat,” he said, shaking the priest’s hand.

Fr. Langdon noticed for the first time that Chad was carrying a shiny knife in one gloved hand. The priest took a step backwards.

“This is for our protection,” Chad said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“It might be necessary to defend ourselves from the others,” Moira said. “The house will not want to give us up.”

Father Langdon nodded. “Before I start, I should let you know that I am here on my own, without the blessing or the authority of the Church. My bishop refused me permission to perform an exorcism. I’m here on my own, and I’m far from expert in this area.”

“But if your faith is true,” Moira said, “we might still prevail.”

“Or the house could add Father Langdon to its collection of trapped souls,” Chad said, “and we’re packed to the rafters already. “

“Before we begin, Father, I’d like to take confession,” Moira said.

“Me too,” Patrick said, to Chad’s surprise.

“And you, young man?” he asked, turning to Chad. “Perhaps you need it more than anyone else.”

 

Not knowing much about confession or the Roman Catholic Church, Chad had used the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins as a rough guide. His list of sins sounded petty and unremarkable, suitable to his petty and unremarkable life.

“I can’t absolve you until you repent your sins. You have to confess whole-heartedly. I know you are leaving something out,” Fr. Langdon prompted. “We must deal with the events of your last night alive.”

“Well, I was drinking wine. Is that a sin? They drank a lot of wine in the Bible. I honestly didn’t know that it was a sin. And I was being bitchy to Patrick, but he was refusing to help me, plus he was cheating on me...”

“I’m not talking about that. You know what I’m talking about.”

“You mean, Halloween? I’m not a Pagan or a devil worshipper and I wasn’t planning to hold an orgy no matter what the tabloids wrote. I was carving pumpkins and later we were going to bob for apples. If I were alive, I’d sue the National Enquirer and use the money to pay back the bank.”

“Chad, you’re going to have to talk about the murder-suicide. I can’t grant absolution until you confess what you did.”

Isolated in the confines of the house, where everyone knew the real story, it had actually slipped Chad’s mind that the rest of the world, even his family and friends, regarded him as a murderer.

“I didn’t kill Patrick and I didn’t kill myself. I was murdered.”

“But the police said...”

“The police,” Chad waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “What do they know? I was there. I know what happened.”

“What happened? Who killed you?”

“That’s not my sin to confess,” Chad said.

 

Clarence Langdon hadn’t spoken a word of Latin for decades, so the words stumbled awkwardly out of mouth. He wasn’t sure why he was praying in Latin, when the ghosts residing in the murder house all spoke English, but it felt traditional and right. The three ghosts who wanted to leave stood next to him. Chad and Moira were holding hands like Hansel and Gretel heading out into the dark woods. Patrick would have liked to hold Chad’s hand, but Chad was holding the silver knife in his other hand, ready to take on Tate or anyone else who might get in the way. Patrick grabbed Moira’s hand instead, and she smiled up at him. For a second Patrick saw her other self, young and sexy, and then in a blink the old Moira was back.

The house shook. It could have been a minor tremor, “a teacup rattler” as Moira’s mother used to call them, which happened frequently in California. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the ceremony that the priest was performing.   However, the interruption was enough to make Fr. Langdon lose his place. He left out a phrase and mispronounced a crucial word. The prayer had to be said perfectly and exactly. He had to start again at the beginning.

The ghosts who inhabited the house were waking up. Something important was happening.

 

Ben Harmon stood in the doorway of the living room. Vivien stood beside him. Violet, carrying her baby brother, was only a few steps behind.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ben asked. He was angry of course. Ben was perpetually on the verge of rage, ready to flare into violence at the slightest provocation.

“Father Langdon is performing a rite. He will make the house let us go. Please don’t try to stop us,” Moira said.

Ben took a menacing step forward. Sensing danger to his family, his expression darkened. When his family was threatened, Ben would do anything – lie, steal or kill – to protect them. In this mood, he was as impervious to reason as an enraged mother grizzly. Vivien put a hand on his arm to try to hold him back, but Ben shook her off. He headed straight for Fr. Langdon.

Chad and Patrick came forward to protect the priest, who was still uttering the words of the prayer. Father Langdon kept his eyes on the prayer book, ignoring all else. The longer he took, the more time the house had to build up its defenses. Even though he was by no means sensitive to psychic phenomena, he could feel the house’s animosity and its power. Its rejection of him had an almost physical force.

Ben had been a street brawler in his youth, and he knew enough to be wary of anyone with a knife, even someone like Chad, who had probably never been in a real fight in his life. He closed in on Patrick. He was younger than Ben and muscular, but his muscles were those of a gym rat – purely ornamental.   He landed a blow to Patrick’s stomach that sent him to the floor. He kicked him in the head, and then advanced on the priest.

“Stop!” Moira said.

Moira stepped in front of the priest. Ben hesitated.

Vivien touched Ben’s arm.

“Ben, maybe it’s time for us to move on,” she said.

Ben said, “At least here, we’re together and I can keep us safe. In the next world, we could be split up. I don’t want to be alone in Hell. “

He turned around, appealing to Violet, who was trying to soothe the crying baby.

“I want to go,” Violet said. “I’m not afraid of what happens next.”

“You’re not afraid of anything,” Ben said. “You don’t understand about darkness, about evil...”

“She’s lived in this house,” Vivien reminded him.   “Of course, she understands darkness. Ben, you don’t have to worry about Hell. You’re a good man. Sometimes you’ve done bad things, but you’ve always been a good person. There are no good people in Hell!”

For a moment, Ben seemed to be listening to his family. Then he shook his head as if to rid himself of their words. With an unreasoning howl of rage, he pushed Moira aside and launched himself towards Fr. Langdon.

Chad darted forward, slashing desperately with the silver letter opener. He cut Ben’s arm. The knife burned, its blade as corrosive to his ghostly form as acid, but Ben was beyond pain just as he was beyond thought or logic.

The fluffer was between him and the priest. Ben grappled with him. He put him in a stranglehold, lifting Chad off his feet. Chad struggled, arms and legs flailing, but Ben hardly noticed the blows. Chad lost consciousness, and the letter opener dropped out of his limp hand. Ben let him go. Chad’s eyes fluttered and then opened. He lay, gasping and coughing, beside Patrick on the floor.

The other ghosts of the house, drawn by the commotion, were watching the fray but taking no part in it. Only Thaddeus, the monstrous infantata, was absent. He could not climb the stairs, and his preoccupied parents had forgotten about him entirely.

One of the ghosts acted now. Tate grabbed the silver paper knife from the floor. The knife burned in his hand.

“Didn’t you hear her? Violet said she wants to go!” Tate said.

He came up from behind, and in one swift decisive movement, slashed Ben’s throat. Ben turned around. There was a gaping wound on his neck but even that did not seem to slow him down.

Violet screamed.

“No, Tate! Go away! Go away!”

Tate disappeared. Ben looked around, confused; he was trying to kill someone who was no longer there. He turned around again to face the priest. Then he sank to his knees. He fell to the floor and was still.

 

Chad and Patrick got to their feet, none the worse for the battering that they had taken. Ben did not get up.

Vivien kneeled next to her husband’s lifeless body.

“What’s happened to him? He can’t be dead. He’s already dead!”

“I don’t know,” the priest admitted. “Maybe the knife released his soul. Maybe he’s just gone on ahead of you.”

“Maybe my little silver knife killed his brutish soul.   Maybe there’s not enough left of him to go to Hell,” Chad said.

Moira gave him a reproving glance. She put a comforting hand on Vivien’s shoulder.

“Father,” she said, looking up at him, “we should continue with the ceremony.”

 

The priest backed away from the Harmon family, giving them space to grieve. He wondered if he should be performing the Last Rites, but Ben Harmon was already dead. He’d been dead for years. Under his breath, he said a brief prayer for his soul.

“That was Tate,” he said. “That was my brother.”

Patrick nodded. “He was the one who killed us. Chad and I didn’t want to mention him. We thought you might not proceed with the exorcism if you knew.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t send my own brother to Hell,” Fr. Langdon said, voice shaking.

“No,” Chad said. “He sent himself to Hell. He was a murderer. He chose to kill.”

“The house corrupted him,” the priest argued. “The evil in the house entered his soul. Growing up here, he was vulnerable to its influence. I left home before it could do its work on me, and Addie had such a strong, pure spirit, but Tate... I rescued myself, but I left him behind.”

Chad shrugged his shoulders, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was the house tainted by the evil deeds done here, or did the evil influence of the house corrupt the people who lived in it? I don’t think it matters. The evil matters.”

“Let God decide,” Patrick said.

“That’s what He’s there for,” Chad added.

 

The priest started to read the prayer. Moira, Chad and Patrick stood by him alertly.   The other ghosts were uneasy. Some were crying, some were in shock, but no one made a move against the priest. Tate reappeared at the edges of the crowd. He had wrapped his burned hand in a cotton bandage and was still holding the knife he had used to kill Ben, ready to attack anyone who tried to stop the rite.

The priest looked up and his eyes met Tate’s. Tate nodded, and the priest continued to read without faltering, the words this time coming out smoothly and clearly, without hesitation.

There was another tremor, stronger this time. Something crashed overhead. Fr. Langdon did not pause.

Impulsively, Patrick reached out to take Chad’s hand. Wherever they were headed, they’d go together.

 

It was a gas main explosion, the fire marshall explained. A minor earthquake had broken a gas main under the old house and then some errant spark had set it off.

Fr. Langdon had been discovered amidst the wreckage of the old place. His leg was broken and he was severely concussed.   When he recovered his wits, the priest explained that he had been to see his old family home for sentimental reasons, and then had entered the place when he had smelled gas. The Ramos family could have charged him with trespassing but they didn’t bother. He wasn’t responsible for rupturing the gas main, and they were in a merciful mood. The insurance company was forced to pay out, and they were finally free of that cursed albatross of a house.

The firefighters who searched the wreckage noticed a curious phenomenon. They expected the sulphurous smell of natural gas, but there was another smell as well, less easily identified. Something sweet and flowery, like lilies or roses. The scent dissipated quickly and was never mentioned in any of the official reports.

 

Deep in the bowels of the ruined house, the infantata made a nest for himself among the rubble and debris. Sooner or later, someone would come down the stairs. Thaddeus would be waiting.


End file.
